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An anonymous reader writes "There has been some speculation about it. Not anymore: 'This is Apple's next iPhone. It was found lost in a bar in Redwood City, camouflaged to look like an iPhone 3GS. We got it. We disassembled it. It's the real thing, and here are all the details.' Judging by Gizmodo's reaction, it looks like a winner."

It's a selling point for some actually. The ability to wipe ones personal information off the phone in case it gets lost or stolen. Admittedly keeping sensitive information on a hand held is just asking for trouble, but being able to wipe remotely does have legit uses. Of course those are all out weighed by the possible abusive uses.

If you look at the EXIF data on any of the images you can see Photoshop tags placed in the file. Not sure what if that means some "manipulating" was done, but I'm not sure why PShop was needed unless it was to change the format from TIFF to JPEG (which was done). It won't let me post the entire stream here but this is/., I'm sure you all know how to get the info yourself.:-)

Uhhh, it's not the slighest bit uncommon to crop or convert photos in Photoshop (or whatever your preferred image editing app is) before posting them on a website. Or would you rather every image posted on the web be some 10MP monstrosity?

They used to have lots of different articles on a lot of different topics. Now they'll write 50 articles on a single device. Anyone who saw gizmodo on the ipad's launch day can attest to this. It's one giant fanboy fapping contest.

They probably just used photoshop to place the watermarked 'Gizmodo.com Exclusive' on each of the photos,
change the brightness contrast and apply some of those focus effects.
All the usual stuff one might do to photos before publishing them on a commercial website

Braun has been highly lauded for their industrial design in the past, and has been a large influence to Johnathan Ive. Aside from looking fairly different from anything else Apple currently sells, it is both Braun-like and Ive-like.

We'll see, but I'm of the opinion that Gizmodo and Apple are in cahoots on this one. Giz is such an Apple fanboy site (look at their non-stop love fest with the iPad) that they wouldn't risk getting into trouble with Apple over this. I think Apple decided to leak this to counter all the traction the new Android phones are getting, and picked a general tech blog that has been behaving the most fanboyish lately. It all seems too pat.

Because Apple apparently wanted to wipe it to prevent the software from being usable/visible. Once you wipe it, the configuration for FindMyPhone is wiped too (the device has to be linked to an account in order to be found).

It's better to lose hardware that can only be looked at than lose the hardware and the software, which would reveal a lot more about features. Gizmodo couldn't even say what the screen resolution was, because all it does it ask to be re-imaged with software Gizmodo doesn't have access to install.

Apple never leaks prototypes into the wild for promotional purposes. If anything, the phone was stolen. Apple likes buzz, but is not going to benefit from two months of "don't buy an iPhone until this new one comes out."

Now Gizmodo has put up a note on their web page saying "Yeah, we have it. Also we took it apart.". Receiving and harboring stolen goods is illegal in basically every state, and can be a federal crime for items $5k or greater that cross state lines. It is totally plausible that a prototype is worth more than five thousand. Depending on the numbers in which they are being produced, it might have even cost that much to manufacture and, being rare and coveted, is worth rather more.

Is it theft if they truly did find it (in a bar)? You find a quarter on the street and pick it up, is that theft? What is the moral obligation to try and return something that you found? Simply because it has more value it's more of an offense? It's not like they can call 1800APPLE and the person that answer would have any clue as to what to do. If it's traceable they should have called and said hey, you have my phone, can I have it back now? If they refused then I might consider it theft and call the appropriate authorities./shrug

My highest was also in the 600 kbps range. It was so fast in fact that the 3G upload was faster than the wireless network supported by DSL I was currently connected to that the time, which topped off around 300-something.

I wondered the legality of this whole situation myself. As it turns out, the item would be considered "mislaid property" [wikipedia.org] and what the person who found it was supposed to do was leave it with the property owner (the bar in this case) on the theory that the person would return to reclaim their mislaid item.

Given that this didn't transpire, the finder of mislaid items is the new owner, unless the original owner returns to claim it. The law also talks about the new finder making a "reasonable effort" to return the mislaid item.

The finder did apparently did try to contact Apple [gizmodo.com]... but has since sold it to Gizmodo. Apple has made a formal demand for the property being returned to them, so it will be... but the damage has already been done, to an extent. I wonder if Apple has any recourse at all.